She felt unwanted.
Discarded.
Secondary.
It only left him more torn.
“Do you think he’ll come back?” she asked suddenly.
Corrado sighed and tipped his head to the side. “Eventually. It’s a messy thing ... me and him, I mean. We’re not normal. Nothing about our relationship has ever been that, you know? We’ve had an open bedroom for years where women were concerned, but this was different. Things were different this time, and I can’t expect you to understand it.”
Ginevra nodded. “That’s what you meant by loyalty, right? You weren’t unfaithful. You were disloyal.”
He stiffened, realizing just how much she had heard in his conversation with Cree.
She didn’t give him the chance to reply before she added just as fast, “But you’re right, Corrado, I don’t understand because you never thought to tell me. You didn’t give me the chance to try to understand. Instead, I get to be the person in the middle—the one ruining something for someone else. I get it, though, it’s not about me for you, right? I’m not the one you want.”
Instead of coming into the office to drop off her book, and get a new one, she set it on the stand next to the door. All the while, Corrado’s heart raged because this woman didn’t understand.
She didn’t know anything at all.
Not about him.
Or Les.
And certainly not how he felt for her.
She deserved to know.
30.
Ginevra
“You’re wrong,” Corrado said behind her. “You are entirely wrong, but I don’t know how to explain this to you because it barely makes sense to me.”
The last thing she needed to do was stand there and let that man justify his shitty actions to people he claimed to care about. And yet, something deep inside her soul came to wrap around her heart tightly, keeping her still in the doorway, even if her back was still turned to Corrado.
“Try, then,” she whispered.
“Ginevra—”
“Try, Corrado. That’s all you have to do. Try to explain it to me. You owe me that much, at least. I think you owe someone else a lot more, but he’s not here, so for now ... we can deal with this. Me and you. Try.”
“There’s never been a you, Ginny.”
The crown molding on the hallway took her attention as she considered his words. “I don’t understand what that means.”
“Exactly, and neither do we. But there has never been a you—oh, there’s been women, yeah. Women he and I shared, or women we found separately, but there has never been a you. Someone like you who I felt something for, someone I was interested in beyond taking to bed. The more I tried to ignore it, because I did try, the worse it became.”
Corrado sighed loudly. “And that makes this complicated thing more fucking complicated than it already is with Alessio and I. That’s not your fault. You didn’t make us complicated or create this mess. We did it. The bigger problem is I don’t think this can be simplified down to who I want here, and that’s what you want me to give you. Isn’t it?”
Twisting her hands together, she wanted to say no. It would be a lie, though, and Ginevra wasn’t a liar. So, because she couldn’t say no, she chose to say nothing at all. It was just easier, and God knew there was enough about this situation that was hard.
Her heart felt like ashes.
It’d been burning down all week.
In her chest, a constant inferno raged on, searing her from the inside out. She didn’t know how to deal with it because it wasn’t only her pain that was the cause of it. Instead, it was him, too. Corrado, and the things she saw him dealing with.
His struggle.
How he didn’t sleep.
Constantly watching his phone.
Running himself dead on the treadmill at night.
Day after day, and night after night. It never ended. He struggled all the time because he was without something he needed and wanted, and she didn’t want to see him in pain. That hurt her. She shouldn’t feel like that at all, though, because he didn’t deserve that.
Right?
She should have been pissed that instead of him wanting her, he was obsessing over someone who wasn’t even there. She shouldn’t want to give him anything—not her time, her attention, or even this here.
Except ... Corrado was right.
This was complicated.
Emotions were a tricky thing.
“It can’t be simplified down to who I want,” Corrado repeated, his voice a hell of a lot closer to her than it had been before, “because that’s not the problem in the first place. I know exactly what I want here, but it’s the rest that makes it a mess for everyone else.”
She turned around slowly only to find he had come to stand right behind her in the doorway of the office. He was entirely too close to her, really, as she could feel the head of his body drifting to hers and smell that musky scent that he seemed to prefer. It only served to muddle up her mind and emotions more, but she chose to ignore it.
She was doing that a lot lately.
“But why?”
Corrado frowned. “Why, what?”
“Why can’t it be that simple? Pick the person you want.”
“And you want me to pick you.”
Ginevra blinked. “I didn’t say—”
“You don’t have to. It’s in everything you do. Everything you say, and the things you don’t say. I see it in your eyes, and in your silence. But you’re good, you know. In your heart, you’re far too good. Better than me, that’s for certain. Because in there,” he said, pointing a finger at the spot over her chest where her heart was beating far too fast, “... in there, Ginny, you don’t want to be selfish, so you say nothing, and you do nothing. That’s who you are, but I can’t say the same.”
“Or,” she countered, “it’s because I think love is—”
“Love?” Corrado scoffed, grinning a little too sardonically for her liking. “Let me tell you what I know about love, yeah? I met a man once, and I knew from the start he was going to change everything for me.”
Her eyes burned, but she refused to blink. Then, the tears that were starting to threaten her calm façade would fall, and he would know just how much this hurt. She didn’t want to do that—didn’t want to give him that.
“And he did,” Corrado continued, “he changed everything. That’s what I learned about love, but I wouldn’t tell him that. I kept that for me, and it hurt him. And then I met you.”
Air pulled painfully through her lungs, but still, she stayed quiet.
What choice did she have?
Corrado stepped forward, closing the inch or two between them until the soft cotton of her sleepwear dragged against his slacks and button-down shirt with every breath she took. “So, here you are,” he murmured, his head tilting down a bit as she stared up at him, “and I got that feeling again—that same fucking feeling like nothing was ever going to be the same because of you, but this time, I just ignored it altogether. Because that’s what I do, Ginny. I ignore, I pretend ... I just don’t.”
“Corrado—”
“I take too much, I want too much, and I demand too much from people who only want to love me. And that’s what you’re standing here asking me to give to you. Do you understand that? You’re asking for me—this mess who is selfish and ruins the people who love him—to give those same things to you.”